These are wicked and miserable accidents and derailments, some of them large-scale, caused by a single error of the machinist or the controller, big enough to be recorded in history books... And yet, multitudes of bystanders (just like in O'Henry story) keep looking upon such carnage with morbid fascination, lost in time and perhaps in their mind, wondering what really took place and how the catastrophe unfolded:

Unintended condensation caused the car full of vapors to collapse upon itself (implode):

"The general-purpose tank car in the photo below was being steam cleaned in preparation for maintenance. The job was still in progress at the end of the shift so the employee cleaning the car decided to block in the steam. The car had no vacuum relief so as it cooled, the steam condensed and the car imploded." Keep in mind that steam has around 1600 times the volume of condensed water - also see the video!

This one has quite a ways to go down... "The high winds of 17 February 2006 have pushed this freight train off off of its tracks while it was crossing a bridge over the St-Laurence River on its way Montreal." -

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21 Comments:

Anonymous said...

The picture with two green tram cars is most probably taken in the AnsaldoBreda workshop. The damaged vehicle on the right was involved in a crash in Milan, near Porta Romana, on 10 october 2008: it derailed due to an error of the driver, who was using his mobile phone while driving.After going out of the track, the Jumbotram hit another tram, an older model made in 1927 (those tram, called "Carrelli" are one of the symbols of the city).Noone was injured, but people on the older vehicle got blocked inside the car due to a failure of emergency opening of the doors.

The video at the end isn't a train hitting a concrete wall, it is a crash test for nuclear waste transport containers. The container is on a flatbed train car that has been turned on it's side, and the train hits the container (the yellow box)

Sorry if you know this already, but it has happened that trains that are to be scrapped have been cleaned up and then dumped in the sea to make artificial reefs for wildlife and divers to enjoy. That may explain the underwater image. Or maybe not! :-)

The crushed black tanker car was the result of implosion. "The general-purpose tank car in the photo below was being steam cleaned in preparation for maintenance. The job was still in progress at the end of the shift so the employee cleaning the car decided to block in the steam. The car had no vacuum relief so as it cooled, the steam condensed and the car imploded." Keep in mind that steam has around 1600 times the volume of condensed water.

Train disaster happen quite often, luckily mostly without fatalities. One example for a catastrophe is the disaster in Eschede/Germany, where a high-speed train derailed and collided with a bridge, killing 101 people on board.

You should look up the train wreck in Prince George, British Columbia about 2 years ago. We all stood in the park and watched the train burning across the river. You could see the smoke all around town.

Picture #6 in the Russian section shows two rubber tired wheels attached to some wreckage between the two trains. The spiked objects to the right are diamond harrows which are not quite obsolete farm equipment. There's another harrow in the center further back and a badly bent on on the left. The wreckage with wheels is the harrow cart. It looks like a farmer was crossing the track when he shouldn't have.

Ad. Utterly Surreal: Tilt-Shift Train WrecksI'm not convinced... these look as actulal tilt-shift photos, not "PS trickery". Of course tilt-shift can be immitated by retouching a photo on PS or other software but why bother? The fun You get with a tilt shift lens (such as PC-E Nikkor 24mm for example) is worth a lot more than time spent on your PS. The PS tilt-shift retouched photos will NEVER look as good as taken with an actual perspective-correction lens.Peace to You all. I love this blog.

The photo of former New York City rollingstock unit 9577 is *definitely* not a train wreck. As someone mentioned before, this is one of the repurposed Redbirds that have been stripped of usable parts, cleaned, and dumped off the eastern seaboard. Please get it right, or note it.

If you're going to show an accident involving NYC rollingstock, at least show a real accident

@ujanja They were intentionally put there to encourage reef growth on the otherwise flat and featureless ocean floor along the eastern seaboard off the coast of the Carolinas. This reef growth has also been great for tourism and fishing in the area.